Your Twitter Feed

Control inflow of information#

The first thing you need to get control over is the inflow of information. This is a matter of signal to noise. Some people may be a lot “noisier” than others. Tweeting about stuff you have no interest in. It will take a while to learn what people share and what you want to see.

Unfollowing someone noisy is a good first step; muting and blocking them is more aggressive. All of these are reversible decisions. I’ve ended up following people I’ve blocked because I made a mistaken snap judgment. Other people act as “signal boosters,” Retweeting and quote Tweeting important/quality stuff from others. You can stay on top of interesting but noisy people by leaning on others who do the filtering work for you.

“I mute the nitpickers, block the outraged, like the kind, follow the insightful.”

- Naval Ravikant

Imposter syndrome slot machine#

Keep in mind that you’re dropping into the deep end. As awesome as it is to be a fly on the wall listening to experts debating, you’re going to be missing required context and knowledge to keep up. You’re also going to see people performing at their best - sharing their wins and “overnight” successes. Keep in mind that their struggles and sacrifices are real but hidden. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed when you compare everyone’s best to your worst. Twitter has been described as an “imposter syndrome slot machine” - take inspiration and insight, but keep everything in perspective.

Involve in Twitter chats#

Some more beginner-friendly ways to find other developers is to get involved in Twitter chats. This isn’t a formal feature of Twitter; it is just a social agreement to come together at a given time and discuss topics using a shared hashtag. You can then surf by hashtag and find good questions and answers to riff off. Good Twitter chats to start with are #devdiscuss, #eggheadchats, and #codenewbie.

Algorithmic feed#

Twitter gives you an algorithmic feed by default (giving you “Top Tweets” determined by their black box algorithm). You can switch this to a chronological feed on some apps, but it is anecdotally poorly supported. While you can’t do much about your Home Feed (representing everybody you follow), you can stay on top of select groups of people by using Twitter Lists. You can also stay on top of high-priority accounts by turning on notifications for them (you can do this while still not letting Twitter interrupt you with push notifications). For a more advanced workflow, look into using Twitter Lists and Tweetdeck. I personally refrain from them because I fear those would lead me to spend even more time on Twitter.